


i'm a vampire, babe

by summerwoodsmoke



Series: vampire au [1]
Category: Ars Paradoxica (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Stubborn Scientists, Vampire AU, doing vampire experiments, let me get our fic count over 20 works first though, mostly this is, obvs there's some death and blood but it's pretty minimal, one of these days i swear yall are gonna kick me out of this fandom, thats it thats what this is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2018-11-16 21:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11261736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerwoodsmoke/pseuds/summerwoodsmoke
Summary: Being a vampire was weird, and kind of terrible, but Sally had been living with it for awhile and thought she'd been handling it okay.Apparently not though, if her being kidnapped and dragged out into the desert was anything to go by.





	1. welcome to the hotel california

**Author's Note:**

> (title from neil young's criticism of the oil industry, 'vampire blues', thanks my man)
> 
> i didn't realize until after i started writing this that perhaps making a bunch of scientists into vampires was a bad idea. i'm not a scientist, so please forgive me for my weird magic hand-wavey science
> 
> it's vampires. let's roll with it

Being a vampire was weird, and kind of terrible, but Sally had been living with it for a while and thought she'd been handling it okay.  
  
Apparently not though, if her being kidnapped and dragged out into the desert was anything to go by.  
  
"I haven't even killed anyone!" Sally shouted. She was tied up in the back of a truck, a sack over her head. A human was driving the truck—she could tell because she could hear his heartbeat, which was a normal speed, while hers was as slow as a whale’s. She also knew her kidnapper knew what she was, because the sack she wore was woven with hawthorn thorns, and the back of the truck stank of garlic. Both made her feel too woozy and ill to do anything. Yelling was still on the table though. "What do you want from me!?"  
  
After hours of silence, the voice finally answered. "We're almost there." It sounded young, male. Not particularly angry or happy or anything, really.  
  
"Where? Almost where? What are you gonna do to me when we get there?" Sally worked herself more into a panic with every question she asked. She accidentally inhaled a huge whiff of garlic and gagged. The voice didn't speak.  
  
A few minutes later, the truck slowed, and Sally wasn't sure whether she should be relieved or even more scared. She missed her lab, cool and clean and full of science that allowed herself to forget about being undead and all that jazz.  
  
Were her assistants going to think she was dead when she didn't show up to work in the morning? When she didn't answer her phone? Oh, no, Beth had her mom's number, if she called her mom, Sally was dead. Well, dead _er_.  
  
The truck's brakes whined as it pulled to a stop. Sally listened to the hand-crank window roll down.  
  
"Morning," a voice outside of the truck said. Was this, like, a security gate?  
  
"Morning," the voice of her kidnapper replied. Was he really gonna get away with a security check with a _literal body_ in the back?  
  
"Uh, excuse me? Hi, yes, remember me? The woman you kidnapped? What is happening right now?"  
  
The voice sighed, and Sally wasn't sure if she imagined the second voice quietly laughing or not.  
  
"See you later," the voice said before rolling up his window and driving again.  
  
"Dude! Seriously! What is going on?"  
  
"We're almost there, then my boss will explain everything."  
  
Sally gave up and focused on breathing through her mouth to try and ignore the garlic. She hoped the boss, whoever that may be, would be nicer to their kidnappee once she was right in front of them.  
  
The truck stopped and the man climbed out of the cab. Sally debated moving to the edge of the truck bed to lie in wait and kick the man before making a great escape, but she quickly discarded the idea—not because of the hawthorn thorns, although they were certainly an added deterrent, but rather because she'd always been terrible at physical activities. Even without the vampire apotropaics, she was sure she wouldn't make it far.  
  
The bed doors opened and the man climbed in, grasped her by the elbow and lead her out. Sally took her first breath of fresh air in hours and waited till the hood was loosened by the man before tearing it off herself.  
  
She was in a warehouse, bare, stale-smelling, with a concrete floor and high ceiling, nothing in the place but fluorescent lights, the truck, and—  
  
"You!" Sally exclaimed, staring at her kidnapper.  
  
He didn't meet her eye as he loosened her ankle ties, then her wrists. "Yes, hello." He was human, probably a few years younger than her, blond and looking like he just got back from leading his Boy Scouts on a romp through the woods.  
  
Sally was a little fish-mouthed. She _recognized_ him. She'd completely forgotten this face, this man, until just now, but regardless, she knew this face. "You!" she finally said again. "You were there, the night I—" _The night I died_ , she stopped herself from saying. "The night I _changed_."  
  
"Ah, yes, yes I was, at my boss's behest. Now if I could take you to him?" He gestured a hand towards a door.  
  
Sally narrowed her eyes. "Wait a minute. Are you the one that left the note?"  
  
The man closed his hand into a fist, not tight, like he was angry, but just sorta like he was thinking _I hate my life_.  
  
He exhaled out his nose and opened his hand again. "My boss is that way. He's the one you need to talk to."  
  
Sally stared at him a few seconds longer, and he stared back, unmoving (or as unmoving as a human could get). She made a face and headed to the door.  
  
She didn't wait for the man, simply opened it and walked through. Right into what looked like a conference room, with a single vampire seated at the table.  
  
Sally bristled, but kept going. The human shut the door behind him and then stood off to the side. Sally glanced at him before sitting down across from the vampire.  
  
The vampire looked to be in his forties or fifties, the oldest-looking vampire she'd ever seen (not that she'd met many). He was white, with a fivehead, and to be frank, didn't look like a man with much patience.  
  
"Hello, Dr. Grissom."  
  
"Hello, kidnapper," she replied.  
  
He smirked a bit at that, and Sally might've punched him for it, if they were both human. "The name's Bill Donovan. I brought you here today to discuss a proposition with you." Sally raised an eyebrow. "How much do you know about vampire physiology?" he asked.  
  
"I didn't even know vampires were real till two and a half months ago. How much do you think?"  
  
"I think," he replied instantly, "That you know more than most people would expect."  
  
Sally thought of the countless experiments she'd done on herself for the past few months and tried not to scowl.  
  
"Alright, so what, I know a bit about how my body works. I'm sure you're much older than I am, know more than I do."  
  
"True," he said dismissively. Sally's fingers curled. "But I know because I am told, not because I run tests myself."  
  
Sally didn't bother to reply. She was still waiting for her unspoken question to be answered and he knew it.  
  
Donovan leaned back, his seat creaking. "I want you to be in my employ, doing experiments related to vampires." His gaze didn't waver from hers, and his mouth still held a hint of his smirk. Sally stared.  
  
"Are you serious," Sally finally said. "You had to kidnap me to do this?"  
  
"You wouldn't come otherwise," was his easy reply, and Sally hated him for it, because he was right. Obviously. But seriously, kidnapping? Geez.  
  
"I really think calling to set up an interview would've worked just fine."  
  
"Perhaps," he said, nonchalant. "But no one knows about this place unless they live here." He sat up and looked her in the eye. "So we couldn't exactly do an interview and have the possibility of you turning us down."  
  
Aaaand, that was when Sally remembered once again that she'd been _kidnapped_. "This job offer doesn't have a refusal option," she deadpanned.  
  
He wove his fingers together underneath his nose. "It does not."  
  
Sally's body was dead, and thus unchanging, and usually just cold, but in that moment, she swore she was burning.  
  
"Chet will get you settled," Bill Donovan said, before getting up and leaving out a second doorway.  
  
The ability to be preternaturally still was one of the first things Sally had noticed after she was changed. It wasn't something she was good at as a human, staying still, and she still didn't do it often as a vampire.  
  
But right then, sitting alone at that table, realizing she'd just had her entire life torn away? She didn't move at all, not a twitch, not a blink. The human—Chet, apparently, what a name—stepped forward till he was next to her chair. When she didn't get up, he asked, "Dr. Grissom?" Another minute went by, and he repeated himself.  
  
After five minutes went by, he stepped back.  
  
After half an hour, he sat down at the table. She was impressed that he knew better than to touch her when she was like this, until she realized she had no clue how many vampires might be running around this weird, security-guarded, warehouse place.  
  
Chet played on his phone for awhile, but eventually, he started talking.  
  
"I've worked here for two years now. We've got quite the group out here, mostly humans, but a sizeable number of vampires. A whole town. We're in New Mexico, by the way. Sorry I couldn't tell you on the way over."  
  
Hours and hours of driving, from one hot state to another.  
  
"Ah, we run on a nocturnal schedule, vampires and humans, and you don't have to worry about blood at all. You'll have your own apartment, too."  
  
The patch of table Sally was staring at had five lines, tree-ring lines all stretched out the way they did on smooth wood tables, and a small nick in it, with blue pen trailing off from the nick.  
  
"It's late morning, so most people are asleep by now. I can take you to your place and everything else can wait till sunset."  
  
He kept going, and she kept sitting, letting him babble about the town's tiny theatre, and library, and community centre. How could a secret town have all that? She wondered, but was still too angry to ask.  
  
Eventually, she became aware of Chet’s heartbeat. He wasn’t scared, or bored—it was steady, just a tad faster than the tick of the clock on the wall. She was suddenly very aware of both sounds, and they warred against each other, out of sync and growing louder and louder in her head until she couldn't stand it, jerking to her feet so fast, her chair fell.  
  
Chet stumbled up a few seconds later, glancing at his phone. She guessed what he was doing and glanced at the clock on the wall.  
  
Five hours. He'd kept her company for five hours, a stranger, putting off his orders to just sit there while she...dealt with this.  
  
Sally glanced at the pen nick on the table again before picking her chair up. "Thanks," she said, just loud enough for him to hear.  
  
He didn't do anything other than nod and lead the way out the door, and for that, she was grateful.

 

* * *

 

Late morning was now afternoon, the day just beginning to leave its brightest part behind. Chet handed her a pair of sunglasses without a word, and Sally pulled her sweater closed, because being a vampire meant second-degree sunburns and splitting headaches from sunlight. She was sitting in the passenger seat of his truck now, and thankfully couldn’t smell the garlic at all.

Chet drove the truck out of the warehouse and Sally squinted against the sun, taking in what looked like a pretty regular small town. The streets were empty, but that was unsurprising, given what Chet had said about the town’s schedule.

They drove down what seemed to be Main Street, and turned left at the only stoplight. A minute later, they were parking in front of an apartment complex, five front doors all in a line.

“You and your fellow...scientists live in this complex.” Chet explained once they were inside. The apartment was already furnished, and the blinds were all closed, so Sally shed the sunglasses and sweater onto the dining table. Chet held out a key to her and she took it before staring at him.

“What would happen if I just left? What would he do?”

Chet looked instantly uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t…”

Sally dropped the key on the table. “I have a _life_ , a whole life you just took me from! Friends, family, a job, all things I love; do I really never get to see any of it again?” Chet opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Sally was off again. “Does Donovan hunt down vampire scientists for his personal amusement, or something? Or is it young vampires he targets? What’s his game? Why does he have _you_ working for him? Are you here willingly or does he force you, too? Force you to kidnap people in the dead of night and choke them with hawthorn?”

By that point, Chet was grimacing, hunched over, and Sally was out of breath and furious all over again. Rather than that preternatural stillness, though, she felt as though she had the energy to run the Boston Marathon, or possibly take down The Rock. She crossed her arms to make sure she didn't punch the wall or Chet or something.

Chet stood up straight, his face now carefully blank, and Sally was reminded that she did not know this man, not really. She knew he had done a good thing (stayed with her for five hours, no questions asked), a bad thing (kidnapped her, yikes), and an unknown thing (been there in Waxahachie the night she’d died). She'd just yelled at a stranger and now she had no clue what he was thinking.

“If you tried to leave,” he said finally, “He would send people to stop you. People who _could_ stop you—other vampires. He'd have you brought back. He wants you here, in part, yes, because you're a scientist, but mostly because you're his responsibility.” Sally snorted, mostly in surprise, and Chet looked up. “I’m serious,” he said. “You're a vampire because of him. He takes responsibility for that.”

Sally’s arms fell to her sides. “He turned me?” she asked, but Chet was shaking his head before she’d even finished. “Then, what? Why is he responsible?”

Sally heard Chet’s jaws clamped together. “I’m not at liberty to say,” he said.

“You're kidding me.” Sally leaned her hip against the table. “What is this, the CIA?”

“It might as well be!” Chet huffed, and holy crap, Sally thought, he just made a joke. Chet sighed. “I signed a contract. I do what I'm told. I’m sorry, Dr. Grissom, but unfortunately there is a limit to what I can say and do.”

Sally studied him for a minute. “A limit on both of us it would seem.” She looked down, then thought, _screw it,_ and pulled out a chair. “So, I can't leave,” she said. “But am I dead to the rest of the world? Like, do you guys have wifi,” she deadpanned.

Chet hesitated before pulling out a seat as well. “We do have wifi. You can contact your family in a few days. We’re constructing a story for you, and once that's in place, you can reach out.”

“A story? Nothing could be as wild as the truth, but hit me with it.”

“You've been offered a fellowship by a private research company. It begins with a retreat that will last six months—”

“Six months!?”

“And will continue on normally for a few years after. Yes, six months, it's the traditional acclimation period for new people in town. After that, there are opportunities to leave for visits.”

“You don't think my employers will find it weird that I chose a fellowship over a lab that I run myself?”

Chet shrugged. “It was an offer you couldn't refuse.” His lips twitched and Sally rolled her eyes.

She picked up her new house key and spun the ring around her finger. “Alright then, you have that figured out. I assume all the paperwork that would typically require my signature is magically being completed?”

“You would assume correctly.”

“So, then, the logistics of me being here are all figured out...that just leaves my questions about _you_. Why are _you_ here?” Sally kept the key spinning on her finger, watching Chet watch the key.

“I...didn't have a lot of good opportunities, before this. Every job I had, I either kept getting caught in bad situations or I was getting paid so little I could barely eat. I moved back home for a bit, my parents have a farm in Montana, and I was starting to consider joining the Navy, like I have a clue about the ocean, when I got a call requesting an interview one day, from this company.” Chet’s eyes had yet to leave the motion of the key, so Sally let herself react with a frown.

“Had you applied for something?”

“I’d been applying for all sort of security positions online, and at the time I figured I’d just forgotten to write one down, but...I have a feeling they found me, not the other way around.”

Sally shuddered a bit at that and dropped the key on the table. “But you chose to be here, right? You did the interview and...it was an offer you couldn’t refuse?” She gave his words back to him.

Chet’s eyes met hers and he nodded. For a second, she hated him, blindly and completely, for being here of his own volition, and for being the one to drag her here himself. The anger simmered down almost immediately, but it was still there, quiet and constant, as it had been since she’d woken up in the back of the truck.

“How often do you do things like this for him?” Sally asked quietly, staring him dead in the eye.

Chet leaned back a bit, grimacing but still keeping eye contact. “Not often, but I know you have no reason to trust me when I say that.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Sally picked up the house key again, then looked down at it in her hand. Small and silver and warm. She closed her fingers around it, hiding it from view, then looked back to Chet. “But I’m gonna choose to believe you anyway, at least for now.”

 

* * *

 

Donovan forced what looked like the whole group out of the labs to meet her, which was just terrific. Sally loved being paraded around like a new pet.  
  
There were three vampires and two humans. The vampires were introduced as 'Team One', and the humans, 'Team Two'. Apparently that was decided by their current projects, and not their relationship with life and death.  
  
"And you'll be on Team Two," Donovan finished. "With Drs. Maggie Elbourne and Ben Quigley."  
  
Sally managed to shake both of the humans' hands without glaring at Donovan. Even managed to shape her face into something like a smile, if only to respond in kind to Ben Quigley's wide, genuine grin.  
  
"Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Grissom," Elbourne said.  
  
"Glad to have you on board!" Quigley was still smiling.  
  
Sally hoped her smile was still smiley enough to match him. "Glad to be here," she said through her teeth.

“Now,” Donovan said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work I need to get to. Dr. Roberts? If you could give our new recruit a tour of the facilities.”

“Of course,” the woman from Team One replied, smiling with no teeth.

Sally watched Donovan leave the building before turning back to face her new coworkers.

“Come with me, Dr. Grissom,” Dr. Roberts said as she walked away, more smooth and graceful than Sally could ever hope to be.

 

* * *

 

“There’s a baseline of biology in almost all of the work we do,” Esther Roberts explained as she walked. Sally followed a step behind her new coworker, taking in the workspace. It looked like another warehouse that had been converted into a lab. “It’s hard not to when most of our experiments begin with the question, ‘How does vampire physiology interact with _x_?’ I went to school for physics, but even so, there’s a large biological component in my work here.” Roberts side-eyed Sally—who probably wasn’t hiding her curiosity very well—for a moment before adding, “In the nineteen forties, as a human. From MIT.”

Sally nodded, grateful she couldn’t blush from embarrassment. When would _her_ cool vampire poker face kick in and stop giving her away? Never, probably. Once Esther had turned away, Sally grimaced and followed behind her.

The warehouse looked like it was occupied by people who had never learned basic lab safety. Beakers and microscope slides littered the counters, a few (off) Bunsen burners were lying around, as were a couple of sweaters and empty food wrappers. Sally would’ve judged, but she knew without her lab assistants back in Waxahachie constantly getting on her case, her lab would probably look about the same. With a physics twist, of course. More mechanical bits and whiteboards and less petri dishes.

“Do you guys live here?” Sally laughed. She poked a Whataburger wrapper, of all things, lying on a lab bench.

Roberts tilted her head. “It sure feels like it, some days. It _has_ been awhile since we’ve cleaned up, hasn’t it…” her voice trailed off into a mutter. “I’ll have to steal the chore wheel back from Jack.”

 _Chore wheel_ , Sally’s brain went. _Vampire chore wheel. Sure._

“So, uh, do you all work in here?” The lab was bigger than hers, so she could see the five of them in here fairly easily.

“Each team has it’s own lab. This is Team One’s, I’ll show you where you’ll be working next.” Roberts had led her in a circle around the outer edge of the lab and they were now back where they’d started. “If you ever need to find the three of us, this is where we’ll be.”

They walked back into the room where Sally’d been introduced to them all, now empty of humans. The two vampire men gave her polite nods, which Sally returned. The room, set up with chairs and tables and a couple of couches, seemed simply like a sectioned off part of the warehouse, converted into a break room. Roberts confirmed this theory as they walked straight across the room, past the exit, to a third doorway.

“Welcome to Team Two’s lab!” Roberts said, her ever-present smile on her face. Sally stepped in behind her and took in a lab that was the exact mirror of Team One’s. There were significantly fewer supplies lying around, but the messiness and hominess from personal stuff was almost exactly the same. Sally stifled a snort. She poked another food wrapper as they walked past a counter, just cause she could.

Elbourne and Quigley were at the front of the room, pulling microscopes and petri dishes out of cabinets. At the sound of Roberts’ heels clicking on the concrete floor, the humans turned to face them.

“Hey, Dr. Grissom!” Quigley set his microscope down on the counter and wandered over to greet them. Elbourne stayed, placing packs of swabs and lancets beside the microscope. “So, uh, if you don’t mind my asking, what did you do before this?”

“Theoretical physics in Waxahachie.” Sally watched with amusement as Quigley did that nod people did when they were pretending they knew where Waxahachie was. “Just south of Dallas,” she added.

“Oh, okay! Well, great! Maggie and I are straight biologists, but we’ll be doing a mix of work together as time goes on, so it’ll be good to have your expertise, I’m sure!”

“So, wait, you guys are both biologists,” Sally turned to Esther, “And you’re a physicist, so what about…” she drifted off.

“Anthony and Jack?” Esther jumped in. “Jack’s a physicist as well. We met each other in college. And Anthony...Anthony is many things. A statistician, first and foremost, but he has doctorates in statistics, chemistry, biology, and history. He’s planning on getting his PhD in physics sometime within the decade, if I recall correctly.”

Sally raised her eyebrows. “Whoa.”

Quigley nodded in agreement. “I know.”

Roberts was half-smiling, half-smirking. “I’m sure the only reason he’s left physics for this long is to let me and Jack feel useful.”

Elbourne stepped up behind Quigley, clearing her throat quietly. Quigley straightened instantly, kinda like Elbourne was his drill sergeant and he’d been slacking off on his push ups.

“We’re ready,” she said quietly. Roberts nodded at Elbourne and took her leave. Sally watched her go before turning back to her new coworkers, who were watching her.

“Ready for your first day on the job?” Quigley asked.

Sally knew her ‘first day on the job’ was going to largely involve her as a test subject, a new vampire in the mix, rather than a scientist with a PhD, but...that tingle of excitement, that wide open feeling in her chest of preparing to tackle vampirism, which was such an unknown, with science...that feeling had worn off within two days of her waking up dead, but it was back now, seeing the lancets and the slides and so on, laid out on the counter waiting for her. She smiled.

“Am I ever,” she told Quigley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well hello my good friends, and thank you for reading my vampire au!
> 
> i have at least a few more chapters planned, each focusing on a different character or group of characters, starting with sally, so keep an eye out for that!
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/alinastarkovas) or on [tumblr](https://tanosoka.tumblr.com)!
> 
> leave kudos/comments! let me know what you think! and if you have any questions, hit me up, because i love thinking about this silly au and would love to do it even more


	2. you're only human for a while

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sally, practically a baby in the world of vampires, works on leaving her human life behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're hours away from the season 3 premiere! im so excited! have some vampire sally to celebrate
> 
> content warning for this chapter: sally dies after being attacked. probably not a huge surprise, but just to be clear what happens here!

“I cannot believe that there’s a chain restaurant in a secret, privately owned town in the middle of the desert.” Sally bit into her Patty Melt with a groan. “But I’m so glad it’s here,” she said through her food.

Jack laughed into his own Patty Melt while Esther just looked a little grossed out. “To be fair,” Jack said (with an empty mouth, like a normal, polite person,) “It’s basically also privately owned? They’ve changed the menu so much, it’s barely Whataburger anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s cause they perfected it for vampire tastes, and it’s fantastic,” Sally shot back, holding up her fast food cup full of blood.

Esther’s hand slowed to a stop, chicken strip hovering over her cup of gravy as she looked at Sally. “You have blood on your chin.”

Sally grabbed a napkin and cleaned her face. “I didn’t actually notice till we came today that it doesn’t actually say Whataburger anywhere.” She picked up her wrapper with its knock-off brand name printed in all caps and laughed. “...Whaiaburgeb. Really?”

Jack shrugged, but he was smiling. “I think it was one of the humans’ ideas. Possibly the librarian’s, I can’t remember.”

“Well, regardless,” Sally took another bite of her practically-raw Patty Melt and groaned again. “They’re my new best friend. This is so good.”

Jack laughed again and this time, Esther rolled her eyes, but Sally was pretty sure she was smiling a little bit too. The two of them, attached at the hip as they were, had surprised Sally when they’d asked her if she’d like to go out to eat with them.

“Go out where,” she’d blankly asked, having completely forgotten about the number of fast food wrappers that were constantly scattered around the warehouse.

“The only place we can go!” Jack had replied, and now they were here. The only chain restaurant (that wasn’t _really_ a chain restaurant) in town. 

There were two other restaurants in town, but both were independent businesses, and one had an exclusively human menu while the other had a mix of normal and bloody menu items. “Whataburger” had an exclusively edited-for-vampires menu, and it kind of made Sally feel like she was in an alternate universe.

Jack stole a chicken strip from Esther, hand moving faster than a human eye could track, and Esther retaliated with a slap on his hand but let him keep the chicken.

“You’re not getting any gravy,” was all she said, and Jack laughed as he bit into the chicken. Sally laughed under her breath at the two of them.

Whatever universe this was, Sally couldn’t deny it had its moments.

 

* * *

 

Sally’s memories from her last night as a human were hazy at best. Against her better judgement, she’d gone out with her coworkers to a bar, because it was Friday, and because the last time she’d talked to her mom, she’d gotten the whole “You should go out more!” spiel, and she’d wanted a break, and—well. Needless to say, she regretted the decision now.

She did actually have fun the night of, which was nice, but she hit her limit a little before midnight and excused herself from the revelry.

“Nooooo, don’t go!” Beth had said, holding her arms out in front of her like she wanted a hug.

“Guys, I love you, but I’m too old for this,” Sally said as she extricated herself from the booth.

“You’re barely older than us!” Jamie pouted, but she was laughing, leaning on Kayla.

“And it makes all the difference, trust me,” Sally said as she grabbed her purse. “Have fun guys, I’ll see you Monday.”

The girls waved at her, giggling all the while, and Sally felt really gross and sweaty and like everything in the bar was just a little too loud, but she was smiling when she waved back at them.

The bar was a block off from one of the more major roads, and Sally didn’t feel like waiting for a cab to come by this street, so she figured she’d just walk for a block before trying to hail anybody. ( _Why didn’t I just use my freaking phone? Get an Uber?_ she thought later. _Am I, or am I not a millennial? What was I_ thinking _?_ ) And then her thought process had been, oh, I’ll just go on this tiny path behind the bar instead of taking the long way, on the sidewalk. You know, like an idiot.

What happened next was when it started to get hazy.

She remembered noticing someone was following her. She didn’t remember deciding what to do about it. Maybe he noticed her noticing him and attacked her right after? She wasn’t sure. Suddenly, she was running, but the wrong way, back towards the bar, away from the main street. She could hear him _laughing_ behind her, and that made her _so angry_ —and then she realized she didn’t have her purse anymore—and then she was face down on some grass, the wind knocked out of her—the laughter sounded further away, somehow, so she picked herself up, ran—she was in a park? She didn’t know there was a park so near the bar?—and that was the last coherent thought she remembered having. Then, from behind, there was hands on her arms, and a stinging in her neck so painful she let out a shout.

It was just pain for awhile, dull in her arms and sharp in her neck, and then it was basically nothing, nothing besides the warm August air against her skin, until instead of air, there was water, and she hadn’t been sure for awhile whether she was breathing or not, but now she was really sure that she wasn’t, and the pain started filtering back in, the cold water a shock to her system.

She couldn’t move her arms, they ached too much, so she mostly just thrashed her legs and hoped she was heading up. Eventually, her legs felt as tired as her arms, and she settled on ‘not sinking’ over ‘trying to get to the surface’. She had a splitting headache, whether from her neck injury or the cold, she wasn’t sure, and her lungs were killing her, and…

She gave up.

Later, Beth, nearly hyperventilating, told her how lucky it was, how lucky she was, that a midnight jogger had seen her in the park’s pond and pulled her out, done CPR on her, found help for her.

“We shouldn’t have let you leave alone,” she whimpered. “You could have died!”

Sally—lying in her bed, unable to feel her pulse—was pretty sure she had.

 

* * *

 

The ‘midnight jogger’, she knew now, was Chet. Seeing him again in Polvo had jump-started her memory, a fuzzy figure hovering over her as she moved in and out of consciousness on the shore of the lake. 

She highly doubted he’d done CPR. She’d always doubted that. Most likely he waited until she died, then waited some more until she woke up, before handing her off to her friends to take her home.

Why had he been there? How had he contacted her friends? Was there really nothing he could have done besides sitting beside her body and waiting for vampirism to take hold?

And another thing—how had he gotten into her apartment later without anybody noticing?

 

* * *

 

The day after she died, Sally got up to find a note on her fridge, stuck there with the Niagara Falls magnet she’d gotten from Jamie a few years ago. It read:

_You’re a vampire now. Yes, a vampire. Yes, they’re real. Check yourself for a heartbeat. Also, your complexion is probably off. If you have any garlic in the house, I’d throw that out (yeah, that’s real)._

_Here’s the gist of it: you were nearly drained by a vampire, and then you drowned. It honestly could have gone either way, you staying dead or becoming undead, but we got you out of the water in time._

_I’m not sure that’s something you’ll want to thank us for._

_You need blood to survive, but not too frequently, and you don’t need to kill to do it._

Then, in a different handwriting:

_He’s being delicate. The rule is, don’t kill, or you’ll be killed._

And that was it. No signature, no nothing.

Sally snorted. “Thanks,” she said out loud, and dropped the paper on the counter. 

A vampire. Okay, then. She’d seen _Dracula_ , _Twilight_ , the odd _Vampire Diaries_ episode. She still hadn’t seen _What We Do in the Shadows_ , much to Jamie’s chagrin. Were any of them accurate, at all? There was a variety of sources on what sunlight would do to her now. Now that she was a vampire. 

Sally laughed, high-pitched and thin, sliding against her cabinet to sit on the floor. Okay. 

Okay, first things first, she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Sally stuck her head between her knees and focused on trying to breathe as slowly and deeply as possible. _Well, now I know vampires need to breathe. Probably. That, or my body’s just going on instinct and telling me out of habit that hyperventilating would be bad._ Sally groaned and focused on breathing again.

After a while, Sally realized she was staring at a bread crumb on the floor, unmoving and breathing normally. She blinked and stood up slowly, unsure about how long she’d been sitting there. She picked up the note again, reread the mystery person’s words— _you drowned, we got you out in time, I’m not sure that’s something you’ll want to thank us for, don’t kill_ —and dropped it again, sighing. Okay, she’d had her freakout. Now she had to figure out what to do.

She stared at the rumpled note, then the fridge, then back at the note. They really hadn’t given her all that much to work with. Garlic was out, but was all food? Could she only drink blood now? And what _kinds_ of blood? Only human? What a nightmare that would be. She stared at the fridge again.

Time for some good old-fashioned scientific method. 

 

* * *

 

Disappointingly, orange juice was now disgusting. Sally wiped her chin with her hand and, grimacing, cleaned the juice she’d spat out off the counter. It didn’t take much more taste-testing after that to assume any acidic drink was now garbage.

A quick Google search confirmed her suspicion that blood was, indeed, slightly basic on the pH scale. Sally sighed and gathered all the juice, lemonade, and soda she had and dumped it into a garbage bag. She added the oranges she had, annoyed because she’d just gotten them two days ago.

Hands on her hips, Sally turned back to her open fridge and exhaled. Her fridge wasn’t quite as full as a normal, healthy, twenty-seven year old’s should be, perhaps, but it was still substantially filled with food that now had the potential to taste like battery acid in her mouth. She rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone again, this time Googling ‘ph levels of food’.

Ten minutes later, she’d sorted out all her food into two piles—acidic and basic. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she muttered to herself, plopping an avocado on top of a container of sliced melon. Her Chinese takeout leftovers (lemon chicken!) went on the garbage pile with a groan. Sally wiped at her forehead and swallowed thickly.

“If water tastes gross too, I’m done,” she muttered as she turned on the tap. She immediately turned it off. It would depend on what was in the water, wouldn’t it? And most cities treated their water with acidic elements. Sally _ugh_ ’d and tried to ignore the thirst that was tickling her throat. She knew, deep down, that the water wouldn’t have helped, but she’d just wanted to pretend for a bit longer.

Tossing the acidic food pile into the garbage bag, Sally lugged the bag to the dumpster before heading to the nearest superstore. She had raw beef and a water filtration system to buy.

 

* * *

 

"I'm not a biologist. I'm a physicist."

Elbourne exhaled through her nose. "So you've said. Many times. I understand. But I still need your help, and it's not really up to either of us anyway."

"It's kind of weird, though, isn't it?" Quigley came up on the other side of Elbourne, then walked behind her to stand near Sally. "That they have one of them—you—working with us on a daily basis? They've _never_ done that."

Sally furrowed her brow. "Wait, really?" The other vampires here were all much, much older than her, more likely to have better control. Why were they putting a rookie like her with the humans?

"I don't know, Ben. Who's to say how Donovan decides on anything." Elbourne pivoted to put both Sally and Quigley in her line of vision. She had a glint in her eye that Sally hadn’t noticed before “Now please, can we get back to work?”

Sally glanced at Quigley only to meet his eye and catch his slight grimace. 

“Of course, Maggie,” Quigley said, pulling his hands out of his pockets.

“Right, yes,” Sally said, and went back to trying to figure out the advanced biology she wasn’t familiar with.

 

* * *

 

She’d taken a few days off work, after dying, figuring there was no real point in saving her sick days anymore. Her coworkers, with the almost-drowning in mind, understood, and Beth had even suggested taking the whole week off. Sally didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand—she still hadn’t figured out how she was going to go outside and get to work and such during a Southern summer, not after an experiment at her bathroom window on Sunday had left her with a deep burn (that took only a few hours to heal) up her arm.

At least she’d figured out the food situation. The mysterious note really had been useless when it came to that, but she’d discovered that both raw meat and meat cooked rare was satisfying. (Sally’d seen that Drew Barrymore zombie show, _Santa Clarita Diet_ , though. She was kinda scared that if she ever tasted human blood, she wouldn’t be able to stand animal blood anymore.) Regular, non-acidic food was fine, but didn’t satiate the way the meat did.

Anyway, the going-outside issue. Luckily, she was a twenty-first century vampire, and the twenty-first century had things like 24-hour stores and delivery services. She’d decided to start ordering groceries, so that solved that problem. For everything else though, she had a rambly note on her phone that looked like so:

_Buy a tinted car_

_Find other vampires at night? where, bar??_

_Figure out work thing- start obscenely early? Start sleeping in office? Or wear sweaters all the time like a weirdo (pros: i dont sweat any more. cons: coworkers will think im even weirder than they already do)_

It was...not going well.

Sighing, Sally texted Beth and told her she was indeed going to take the whole week off.

 

* * *

 

November 22

Sent 4:06am  
Hey could we meet up to talk about some stuff? I need some more answers

Sent 4:09am  
Oh this is Dr Grissom btw

Sent 4:10am  
Also is your last name really Wickman cuz that's hilarious 

Received 4:19am  
It's Whickman, and thanks. Yes, we can meet. I can come to your apartment so we don't have a time restraint, but if you’d rather, we could meet at the warehouse. 

Sent 4:20am  
Warehouse is fine

 

* * *

 

“Great!” Sally said when Chet entered the break room. “You’re here, let me grab my coat and we can go.”

“Go…?” Chet muttered under his breath.

“On a walk, my friend,” Sally answered, although she knew she wasn’t meant to hear that. She walked out the door and expected Chet to follow.

He did, running lightly to catch up. “Why did you have me meet you at the warehouse if we were just gonna walk back to your place anyway?” 

“More time to talk, duh. Stop wasting it.”

Chet didn’t need to say or mutter anything for Sally to know he was thinking, _That makes no sense_ , but thankfully he just dropped it. “Okay, but who gave you my number and surname?”

Sally narrowed her eyes. “Should I not tell you for their safety?”

“Okay, so clearly it was Esther or Jack,” he deadpanned. 

Sally pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, and continued walking without another word. 

“All right, fine, I’ll drop that for now too. You said you want more answers–”

“Need,” Sally interrupted. “I need more answers.”

“Right. You need more answers. But nothing's changed since you first arrived. There are certain things I’m not allowed to say.”

“But am I allowed to ask?”

Chet didn't reply, simply sighed quietly and slid his hands into his pant pockets. 

“All right. My sire. You said Donovan didn't change me, but was it someone who lives in Polvo?”

Chet looked up at the slowly fading night sky. 

“Have I met them?”

Chet’s mouth twisted to the side as he shook his head a teensy bit. 

“Are they…” Sally’s thoughts swirled. She didn't know what to ask. Or rather, she did, but she didn't want to ask it. She was aware of vampires in the town who weren't scientists. But the thought of her sire, someone who had _attacked_ her, being just another face in Polvo didn't sit right with her. She had a feeling...had suspected for a while, really...and she believed Donovan to be capable of it, no question. She just didn't want her belief to become reality. 

She didn't want it to, but her desire to know the truth was greater than her fear. She inhaled to fortify herself. “Are they kept prisoner by Donovan?”

After a long second of silent walking, Chet adjusted his neck angle, lifting his chin up in a stretch. An affirmative. Sally want to curse and yell at the sky. Imprisoned. Seriously?

“Is it because of what they did to me?”

Another silence, even longer before Chet just stopped walking. “It’s complicated,” he said to his feet.

“Will I ever be considered an adult with critical thinking skills able to understand complicated situations?” Sally shoved her hands into her pockets and made them into fists, just to feel the tightness in her joints.

“You should be,” Chet said. “I know. I know, you know, the teams know. But–”

“But Donovan’s word is law.”

Chet shrugged helplessly.

Sally inhaled slowly. She let her fists relax. She studied the crack in the pavement Chet was standing on and, with the children’s rhyme dancing through her mind, wondered about his mother, about the fact that this strange, infuriating man, of course, had parents. 

And then she thought of her toilet.

“Well,” she chirped, “I had another reason I texted you.” Chet looked up, eager to help somehow, which pissed her off that it wasn’t the way she wanted, but whatever. “My toilet’s broken,” she said. “And you’re the guy to call, right? Putting up all that BS.”

 

* * *

 

November 22

Sent 5:30am  
Ok but my toilet really is busted Whickman 

Received 5:36am  
A plumber will get in touch with you tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

“Why do you have birthday hats in your car?” Sally asked as Chet set box three of party supplies in her arms. Granted, people did wear stupid hats on New Year’s Eve, but these hats were definitely covered in balloons and birthday wishes.

“Uh, leftover from ages ago,” Chet answered (suspiciously fast, Sally noted) as he added another two boxes to Sally’s arms, effectively blocking her view of the hats. He grabbed the last box and kicked his car door shut. “That’s everything, let’s go.”

Sally rolled her eyes and followed Chet to where they’d set up the tables in the park.

If someone had told Sally last New Year’s that in a year's time, she’d be dead, working in New Mexico, have the worst boss in the world, and be setting up an NYE party in the desert...she probably would’ve told them to lay off the alcohol for the night. And yet, it was true, death and all, and Sally really was willingly outside setting up for a town party.

Eventually, the community park was as festive as it could possibly be with only two people working on it. Sally and Chet had been there for two hours in the cold, hoping to get it ready before most people woke up. 

"Okay, I'm done," Sally said after they'd finished hauling all the drinks out of Chet's truck. "I'm taking a break, and I refuse to start working again until someone other than us helps."

Chet laughed a bit as she pulled herself onto a table. It was cold enough that his breath came out in clouds. Was he too cold? She couldn't tell the difference between what was cold and Too Cold nowadays, and mostly wore jackets out of habit. 

Chet grabbed a beer and came to sit beside her. He was wearing a hat, gloves, the whole works. Looked like he was about to go cut down a Christmas tree, although Christmas was a week past. Sally hid her smile as she watched him drink. 

He noticed her watching and lowered his bottle. "Do you want some?" he asked, tilting it to her. 

She considered it, then shrugged. "Thanks." She hadn't drunk much since being changed. She'd experimented a bit, right after she turned, and she'd had some of Wyatt's bloody egg nog at the Christmas parties all month, but that was it, really. 

So, taking a huge swill of beer was a mistake. It burned her sinuses, and she barely managed to swallow it without being sick. " _What_?" she croaked out, infuriated. 

"I guess I should've given some heads-up," Chet said. He sounded like he was trying not to laugh. "I thought you knew, I'm sorry."

"That was way worse than orange juice."

"It's fine in small sips, or so I've heard." He held out the bottle again. "Wanna try again?"

Sally shook her head and coughed once more. That was embarrassing.

The park's floodlights clicked on around them with a hum, illuminating the work they'd done for the party. People would be waking up soon, thank goodness, and then they could have the party, and welcome in the New Year. Exciting. Sally sighed. 

"This sucks. I hate it."

"It?" Chet paused, then added cautiously, "Undeath?"

"Yes. Hate it."

"Do you really?" Chet asked. 

Sally raised an eyebrow. "I've missed two major family holidays so far. My mother probably thinks I'm dead. Yeah, I hate it."

Chet gestured to her with his head and his drink, in a _point_ sort of way. 

"Although I guess that's more about Bill Donovan than vampirism. I already knew I didn't like Donovan, though."

Chet continued to keep quiet. 

"What, you're not gonna try and give me some spiel about how great the work I'm doing here is?" she asked after a few seconds of silence.

Chet shook his head. "If Donovan were here, and in the right mood, he'd probably give you the cheesy American spiel you're looking for, and not mean a word of it. But...I've been here for over two years. I mean, my family doesn't think I'm dead, but I might as well be dead to them. I haven't seen them since I started here." He shrugged. "I get it. Me and Team Two...we might be the only ones that really do." He turned to meet her gaze, which she took as her cue to look at the ground. 

How annoying it was, to be neither truly part of the vampire 'team' or the human one. How annoying it was to not know for sure which group she coveted more. The ones with the same life experiences as her for most of her life, or the ones who knew exactly how she lived now?

"Guess so," she said out loud, then turned to face the rest of the park. Esther and Jack climbing out of their car caught her eye from the parking lot. "I'm gonna head over, help them carry stuff." They definitely did not need the help, but neither Sally nor Chet commented on that. 

"Sure thing," was all he said.

 

* * *

 

Sally always thought it was a little bizarre that Donovan’s right hand man was a human, and after the New Year’s-turned-birthday party, Sally was surprised that Whickman was still alive, frankly.

As it turned out, Bill Donovan had been born on January 1st, however many decades or centuries ago that had been. A scant two minutes after the countdown, Chet had appeared at Sally’s side and shoved one of the birthday hats she’d spotted earlier into her hand.

“Put it on in a minute,” he whispered before moving on to hand out more. 

A second batch of confetti sprinkled down on them, courtesy of Partridge, and a laughing Wyatt and Roberts led the gathered citizens of Polvo in singing _Happy Birthday_.

Sally had quite honestly never been so horrified and confused in her life. She was frozen, holding her hat in her hand, watching her smiling coworkers and neighbours tease their boss/overlord, who looked as deadpan as a person possibly could.

There were things Sally had found she quite enjoyed about living in Polvo. Not having to worry about blood was huge. Getting to meet other vampires that she actually liked, like Team One, was great. Tonight, though, it seemed like the entire town was conspiring to make her remember everything she hated about her life here. The lack of _choice_ , the lies, the secrets. And Donovan was at the heart of it all.

Glancing down, she realized she’d crushed the paper hat in her fist. Feeling cold and annoyed, she dropped it on the grass for someone to pick up later—she’d set up the whole party, she felt like she could get away with leaving cleanup to someone else—and headed home without a word to anyone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [show me your teeth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12463662) by [estherroberts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estherroberts/pseuds/estherroberts)




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